I can’t think of anything more appropriate for our Foodie Friday fun this week than the tale of the $1,500 chicken sandwich. Did you hear about this? As reported in Consumerist (and a number of other places):

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Andy George of the “How to Make Everything” YouTube channel posted a video about his efforts to make all of the ingredients he’d need for his entirely homemade sandwich, including: growing his own vegetables and pickling his own pickles, making salt from ocean water, milking a cow to make cheese and butter, harvesting wheat and then grinding it to make his own flour, collecting honey and yes, killing a chicken himself. So how was the ultimate homemade sandwich? Eh.

You can watch the entire video here. I look at this story as the absolute reason we’re in business: to provide value. After all, chicken sandwiches aren’t typically sold for $1,500, nor do they require you to think ahead six months when you decide to have one. Instead, there are businesses performing each step – making salt, baking bread, etc. – and adding the values of quality and time so we don’t have to.

That’s really the question each of us needs to answer: how am I providing value to my customer? How is what I am giving them in return for the money they’re giving me more valuable to them than doing it themselves? Of course, one wouldn’t expect consumers to, say, build their own cars. That’s way more complicated than a chicken sandwich, after all. Then question then becomes how am I providing a better value to my customer than anyone else trying to solve the same problem for them.

We sometimes hear people (generally, unhappy people) muttering “if you want something done right you need to do it yourself” to themselves. Our job is to convince them that expression is wrong. When $1,500 chicken sandwiches become an attractive option, we’re all in trouble!